HolUnger 

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Reprinted from the 

EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 

New York, September, 1898 

Copyright, 1898, by Henry Holt & Co. 



HIGHER EDUCATION 

ITS FUNCTION IN PRESERVING AND EXTENDING 
OUR CIVILIZATION 



/ 



University Convocation Address Delivered at the Oiiarter 
Centennial Boston University, May ^i , 1898 



BY 

W. T. HARRIS 



\ 

\ 
\ 



Vj Kilt 



Ill 

THE USE OF HIGHER EDUCATION ' 

I have thought it would be appropriate on this occasion, 
when we celebrate the completion of a quarter-centennial by 
this young and vigorous university, to ask your attention to 
the subject of higher education and its function in preserv- 
ing and extending our civilization. 

Young as it is, Boston University has beheld greater 
changes in higher education within the epoch of its life than 
have been seen in any previous quarter-century since the Mid- 
dle Ages. 

What with the extent of our public elementary schools and 
the continual instruction derived throughout life from news- 
papers, magazines, and books, we seem to have a popula- 
tion of self-educated men and women. One would expect a 
relative decrease of attendance on the college and university. 
He who runs may read, and certainly the hours of leisure 
from business are sufficient to make the habitual reader a 
learned man by the time he crosses the meridian of life. In 
a national career full of opportunities we should expect a 
growing impatience of long school terms. Eight years in the 
elementary schools followed by four years in secondary 
schools, and then four years at college followed by a three- 
year term of postgraduate study — how can the American 
youth be made to undertake so much? 

It is a complete surprise for us to learn the actual statistics 
in regard to the schooling of our people. 

In 1872, the year before the founding of Boston University, 
the records of higher education show for the entire nation an 
enrollment of 590 students in each million of inhabitants — a 

' The University Convocation address, delivered at the quarter-centennial of 
Boston University, May 31, 1898. 

147 



148 Educational Review [September 

little more than one college student, on an average, for each 
community of two thousand population. - 

Not only did the growth of schools for higher education 
keep up with the growth in population, but the enrollment 
increased year by year until in 1895 (twenty-three years later) 
instead of 590 students we had iigo in each million. The 
quota had doubled, and it has since increased. And it is the 
more surprising when we call to mind the fact that the stan- 
dard of admission to the Freshman class has been placed 
much higher. The elite colleges have followed the lead of 
Harvard for twenty-five years, and their requirements for ad- 
mission demand nearly two years more than was needed 
fifty years ago. Even the colleges that have resisted the 
tendency to raise standards of admission have been obliged 
to yield, some more and some less. Considering the amount 
of work counted as higher education fifty years or even 
twenty-five years ago and now^ performed by high schools and 
academies, we are right in afifirming that the quota receiving 
higher education in each million of people is three times as 
great as twenty-five years ago, when Boston University was 
founded. 

But it is not numbers alone that have changed. The work 
performed in higher education has changed still more. In 
fact it is now in process of unfolding a second phase of work 
quite as important as that which it has performed since the 
beginning. To a course of study for culture — the so-called 
course in philosophy, the academic course in the humanities 
and mathematics — it has been in process of adding a course 
of three years of special work in the laboratory or in the 
seminary — the student choosing his narrow field and concen- 
tratinsf on it his entire attention for three vears and at the 
end receiving a doctor's degree. This second part of the 
course of study in the university is a discipline in original 
investigation. 

The student in his elementary, secondary, and the first part 
of the higher course of study, has been in search of culture. 
He has mastered one by one the several branches of human 
learning in their results and in the elements of their methods 

' See Appendix I 



1898] The 2ise of higJier education 149 

(but certainly not in their working methods, their practical 
modes of investigation). Now in the second part of higher 
education the student selects a small field and masters it prac- 
tically, not merely learning what others have done in it, but 
pushing his research into new fields until he can say with 
assurance, I have made new discoveries in a limited field of 
human endeavor and am become to a small extent an original 
authority. 

Certainly this doubles the \'alue of higher education 
although the new field, the field of specialization, is in no 
sense a substitute for the other field, that of the mastery of 
the lessons of human learning. 

Within the short period between 1872 and 1S97, the 
quarter-centennial of Boston University, we have seen the 
feeble infancy of the method of original investigation grow 
to a sturdy youth. The next quarter-century — and may it 
be as prosperous as the one just completed for this institution 
and for its kindred — the next quarter-century will see the 
youth come to a vigorous manhood and vast numbers of 
young men and women undertake the special investigations 
necessary to solve problems arising in our civilization — prob- 
lems relating to material environment and problems relating 
to the adjustment of social, political, and international 
problems. 

The number of students reported as engaged in post-gradu- 
ate work in all our colleges and universities in 1872 was only 
198. This has increased steadily, doubling once in five or 
six years, until in 1897 the number reached 4919. From less 
than 200 the post-graduates have increased to almost 5000. 
Thev are twenty-five times as numerous now as at the time 
Boston University was founded.^. 

Professional students, too, have increased. The number 
studying law, medicine, and theology in 1872 was only 280 
in each million of inhabitants. In 1896 the 280 had become 
740 in the million.^ 

In the same quarter of a century scientific and technical 
schools have multiplied. In the seven years from 1890 to 
1896 the number of students in engineering and applied sci- 

^ See Appendix II '' See Appendix III 



1 50 Educational Review [September 

ence increased from 15,000 to nearly 24,000 (14,869 to 

In the first days of higher education it was naturally be- 
lieved that only the professional schools for law, medicine, 
and divinity needed a preparation in the college course. 
Now it is beginning to be seen that the most practical occu- 
pations, those for the procurement of food, clothing, and 
shelter, as well as those for the direction of social and political 
life, need also the studies that lead to the A. B. degree as 
well as the specializing post-graduate studies that lead to 
original combinations in industry and politics. 

Post-graduate work as it was in 1872 had not fully seized 
the idea of original investigation. There was a dim idea that 
higher education should end as it had begun, namely, as a 
system of set lessons with text-books and recitations — post- 
graduate work should be a continuation of undergraduate 
work. The idea of the laboratory for experiment and re- 
search and of the seminar}'- and library for original investiga- 
tions in history, politics, archssolog)^, and sociology, has de- 
veloped within that time for us. 

Other nations (one thinks especially of Germany) have had 
this for a longer period. The significance of this precious 
addition to our system of education will become clear if we 
go over for ourselves some of the grounds which make higher 
education more useful and productive than elementary and 
secondary. 

There is something specific in higher education, as it ex- 
ists in the college, which gives an advantage to its graduates 
in the way of directive power over their fellow-citizens. Ele- 
mentary education is a defective sort of education, not merely 
because it includes only a few years of school work, but be- 
cause its methods of study and habits of thought are neces- 
sarily crude and inadequate. 

The elementary course of study is adapted to the first eight 
years of school life, say from the age of six to that of fourteen 
years. That course of study deals chiefly with giving the 
child a mastery over the symbols of reading, writing, and 

^ See Appendix IV 



1898] The use 0/ higher ediuation 151 

arithmetic, and the technical words in which are expressed 
the distinctions of arithmetic, geography, grammar, and his- 
tory. The child has not yet acquired much knowledge of 
human nature, nor of the world of facts and forces about him. 
He has a tolerably quick grasp of isolated things and events, 
but he has very small power of synthesis. He cannot com- 
bine in his little mind things and events so as to perceive 
whole processes. He cannot perceive the principles and laws 
underlying the things and events which are brought under 
his notice. He consequently is not able to get much insight 
into the trend of human affairs, or to draw logical conclusions . 
from convictions or ideas. 

It is a necessary characteristic of primary or elementary 
instruction that it must take the world of human learning in 
fragments and fail to give its pupils an insight into the con- 
stitution of things. Let anyone who claims the most for the 
elementary methods of instruction say whether his pupils at 
ten years old are capable of such a comprehensive grasp of any 
subject as will become possible after four years more of good 
teaching. Let the ardent believer in scientific method say 
whether the child can learn at twelve years to make allow- 
ance for his personal equation and subtract the defects of his 
bodily senses from his inventory of facts of nature. Is it to 
be expected that a child ca free himself from prejudices, not 
to say superstitions, at that age; and that he can discriminate 
between what he actually sees and what he expects to see? 
It is somewhat better in the ages fourteen to eighteen. 

The education of high schools, academies, and preparatory 
schools — what American writers call secondary schools — be- 
gins to correct this inadequacy of elementary education. The 
pupil begins to see things and events as parts of processes, 
and to understand their significance by tracing them back 
into their causes and forward into their results. 

While elementary education fixes on isolated things, sec- 
ondary education deals with the relations of things and events 
in groups. It studies forces and laws, and the mode and 
manner in which things are fashioned and events accom- 



152 Educational Review [September 

plished. To turn off from occupation with dead results and 
to come to the investigation of the Hving process of produc- 
tion is a great step. 

Where the pupil in the elementary school studies arithme- 
tic and solves problems in particular numbers, the secondary 
pupil studies algebra and solves problems in general terms, 
for each algebraic formula is a rule by which an indefinite 
number of arithmetical examples may be worked out. In 
geometry the secondary pupil learns the necessary relations 
which exist between spatial forms. In general history he 
studies the collisions of one nation with another. In natural 
science he discovers the cycles of nature's phenomena. In 
acquiring foreign languages he studies the variations of words 
to indicate relations of syntax; he becomes acquainted with 
the structure of language, in which is revealed the degree of 
consciousness of the people who made it and used it. Lan- 
guage reveals all this, but not to the youth of sixteen. He 
gets some glimpses, it is true, but it will take years for him to 
see as a consistent whole the character of a people as implied 
in its mode of speech. For to do this he must be able to 
subtract his personal equation again. He must be able to 
see how things would seem to him if he did not think them 
in the Highly analytic English tongue, but in a language with 
inflections like Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit; in a language like 
the Chinese, where even the parts of speech are not clearly 
differentiated and no inflections have arisen. 

But the most serious defect of secondary education is that 
it does not find a unity deep enough to connect the intellect 
and will. Hence it does not convert intellectual perceptions 
into rules of action. This is left for higher education. A 
principle of action is always a summing up of a series. 
Things and events have been inventoried and relations have 
been canvassed; the results must now be summed up; the con- 
clusion must be reached before the will can act. If we act 
without summing up the results of inventory and reflection, 
our act will be a lame one; for the judgment will remain in 
suspense. 

We may contrast elementary education and secondary edu- 



1898] The use of higher education 153 

cation with the education that comes to the ilhterate from ex- 
perience. He may as a locomotive engineer know all the 
safe and all the dangerous places on his road. He may know 
every tie and every rail, but in this he knows only one or two 
processes and their full trend. He is limited by his own in- 
dividual observation. The man of books, on the other hand, 
has entered into the experience of others. Books have given 
him a knowledge of causes. He can explain his particular 
experience by carrying it back to its cause. In the cause he 
sees a common ground for the particular fact of his experi- 
ence and also for the endless series of facts really present only 
in the experience of other men, present and past, and only 
possible for his experience in an endless time. 

Thus even elementary and secondary education, though 
inferior to higher education, lift up the boy or girl above the 
man or woman educated only in the school of experience. 
They have attained that which will grow into a much broader 
life. They will be able to interpret and assimilate vast fields 
of experience when once they encounter them in life; while 
the illiterate is quickly at the end of his growth, and what he 
has learned will not assist him to learn more. 

This relation of illiterate experience to elementary-school 
education helps us to understand the defect of elementary as 
compared with secondary and secondary as compared with 
higher education. 

It is the glory of higher education that it lays chief stress 
on the comparative method of study; that it makes philoso- 
phy its leading discipline; that it gives an ethical bent to all 
of its branches of study. Higher education seeks as its first 
goal the unity of human learning. Then in its second stage 
it specializes. It first studies each branch in the light of all 
others. It studies each branch in its history. 

A good definition of science is that it unites facts in such a 
way that each fact throws light on all facts within a special 
province and all facts throw light on each fact. Nature is 
first inventoried and divided into provinces — minerals, plants, 
animals, etc., geology, botany, zoology. Thus secondary 
education deals with the organizing of facts into subordinate 



154 Educatio7ial Review [September 

groups, while higher education undertakes to organize the 
groups into one group. 

The first part of higher education, that for the B. A. degree 
— as we have said already — teaches the unity of human learn- 
ing. It shows how all branches form a connected whole and 
what each contributes to the explanation of the others. This 
has well been called the course in philosophy. After the 
course in philosophy comes the selection of a specialty; for 
there is no danger of distorted views when one has seen the 
vision of the whole system of human learning. Higher edu- 
cation cannot possibly be given to the person of immature 
age. For the youthful mind is immersed in a sea of particu- 
lars. A college that gave the degree of bachelor of arts to 
students of eighteen years would give only a secondary course 
of education after all, for it would find itself forced to use the 
methods of instruction that characterize the secondary 
school. It would deal with subordinate groups and not with 
the world view. The serious tone of mind, the earnest atti- 
tude which inquires for the significance of a study to the prob- 
lem of life, cannot be formed in the normally developed stu- 
dent from fourteen to eighteen years of age. But at eighteen 
years of age the problems of practical life begin to press for 
solution. This in itself is a reason for the demand for phi- 
losophy, or for a measure that may settle for the student the 
relative value of each element of experience. The youth of 
proper age to enter on higher education must have already 
experienced much of human life, and have arrived at a point 
where he begins to feel the necessity for a regulative principle, 
or a principle that shall guide him in deciding the endless 
questions which press upon him for settlement. He must 
have begun to ask himself what career or vocation he will 
choose for life. 

Taking the youth at this epoch, when he begins to inquire 
for a first principle as a guide to his practical decisions, the 
college gives him a compend of human experience. It shows 
him the verdict of the earliest and latest great thinkers upon 
the meaning of the world. It gives him the net result of 
human opinion as to the trend of history. It gathers into 



1898] The 2Lse of higJier education 155 

one focus the results of the vast labors of specialists in natural 
science, in history, jurisprudence, philology, political science, 
and moral philosophy. 

If the college graduate is not acquainted with more than 
the elements of these multifarious branches of human learn- 
ing, yet he is all the more impressed by their bearing upon 
the conduct of life. He sees their function in the totality, 
although he may not be an expert in the methods of investi- 
gation in any one of them. 

For the reason that higher education makes the ethical in- 
sight its first object, its graduates hold the place, in the com- 
munity at large, of spiritual monitors. They exercise a di- 
rective power altogether disproportionate to their number. 
They lead in the three learned professions, and they lead in 
the management of education of all kinds. They correct the 
one-sided tendencies of elementary education, and they fur- 
nish the wholesome centripetal forces to hold in check the 
extravagances of the numerous self-educated people who 
have gone ofif in special directions after leaving the elemen- 
tary school. 

Dr. Charles F. Thwing, President of Western Reserve 
University, a few years ago was at the pains to hit 
upon a novel method of comparing the college gradu- 
ate with the rest of society. He took the six vol- 
umes of Appleton's Cyclopedia of American biography 
and counted the college graduates in its list of over 15,000 
names. A little more than one-third of all were dis- 
covered to be college men. A safe inference was that 
one out of ten thousand of the population who have not had 
a college education training has become of sufficient note to 
be selected for mention in a biographical dictionary while one 
out of each 40 of our college men finds his place there. The 
chance of the college man as compared with the non-college 
man is as 250 to i to become distinguished as a public man of 
some sort — soldier, naval officer, lawyer, statesman, clergy- 
man, teacher, author, physician, artist, scientist, inventor — 
in short, a man with directive power of some kind, able to 
combine matter into a new and useful form, or to combine 



156 Ediicatio7ial Review [September 

men in such a way as to reconcile their differences and pro- 
duce a harmonious whole of endeavor. 

We have already explained that the person who has merely 
an elementary schooling has laid stress on the mechanical 
means of culture — on the arts of reading, writing, computing, 
and the like. He has trained his mind for the acquirement 
of isolated details. But he has not been disciplined in com- 
parative studies. He has not learned how to compare each 
fact with other facts, and still less how to compare each sci- 
ence with other sciences. He has not inquired as to the 
trend of his science as a whole, nor has he asked as to its im- 
perfections which need correction from the standpoint of 
other sciences. He has not yet entertained the question as 
to its bearing on the conduct of life. 

We would say of him that he has not yet learned the dif- 
ference between knowledge and wisdom; he has not learned 
the method of converting knowledge into wisdom; for it is the 
best description of the college course of study to say that its 
aim is to convert knowledge into wisdom — to show how to 
discern the bearing of all departments of knowledge upon 
each. 

Again, considering the permanent effects on the intellec- 
tual character, it is evident that the individual who has 
received only an elementary education is at great disadvan- 
tage as compared with the person who has received a higher 
education in the college or university, making all allowances 
for the imperfections of existing institutions. The individual 
is prone to move on in the same direction and in the same 
channel that he has taken under the guidance of his 
teacher. Very few persons change their methods after they 
leave school. Hence the importance of reaching the influ- 
ence of the method of higher education, the method of 
original investigation, before one closes his school career. 

It is easy to enumerate the influences of the university and 
see their great transforming power. Its distinguished pro- 
fessors, its venerable reputation, the organization of the stu- 
dents and teaching corps into an institutional whole, the isola- 
tion of the student from the strong ties of the home and the 



1898] The use of higher' education 157 

home community— all these, taken together, are able to effect 
this change in method when brought to bear upon a young 
man for four years. He acquires an attitude of mind which 
we have already described as critical and comparative. It is 
at the same time conservative. He has learned to expect 
that the existing institution may have deeper grounds for its 
being than appear at first sight; while, on the other hand, the 
mind trained in elementary and secondary methods is easily 
surprised and captivated by superficial considerations and has 
small power of resistance against shallow critical views. It 
is easily swept away by a specious argument for reform, al- 
though we must admit that the duller, commonplace intellect 
that has received only an elementary education is apt to fol- 
low use and wont and not question the established order. It 
is the brighter class of minds, that stop with the elementary 
school, wdiich become agitators in the bad sense of the term. 
The restless and discontented class of people, those who mis- 
take revolution for reform, are recruited from the elementary 
ranks. But the commonplace intellect has no adaptability, 
or at least small power of readjustment, in view of new cir- 
cumstances. The disuse of hand labor and the adoption of 
machine labor, for instance, find the common laborer unable 
to substitute brain labor for hand labor, and keep him in 
the path of poverty wending his w^ay to the almshouse. 

Our numerous self-educated men, of whom we are so 
proud, are quite apt to be persons who have never advanced 
beyond elementary methods. Very often they are men of 
great accumulations in the way of isolated scraps of informa- 
tion. They have memory pouches unduly developed. They 
lay stress on some insignificant phase of human affairs. They 
advocate with great vigor the importance of some local cen- 
ter, some partial human interest, as the chief object of all 
life; Not unlike them is the astronomer who opposes the 
heliocentric theory, and favors the claim of some planet or 
some satellite as the true center. 

This is the crying evil with the dominance of elementary 
education and our swarms of self-educated men. They 
take the primary view of all things, and this is of necessity a 



15S Educational Review [September 

distorted view. Their theory supposes, innocently enough, 
that the immediate view of things shows them as they truly 
are. It looks at the present object out of its historic con- 
nection and fancies that it knows it, without taking into con- 
sideration the process by which it has been generated and 
come to be what it is. All college or university work — 
even the poorest specimens of it — deals more or less with the 
genesis of things — with their process of becoming — and sets 
the student into a habit of mind which is dissatisfied with the 
immediate aspects of things and impels him to go at once 
behind them to causal processes and seek to find what states 
and conditions preceded, and how the changes were wTought, 
and exactly why we have things as they are. It gets to 
understand the trend of things and can tell, prophetically, 
what is likely to come next. 
y- This primary view of the world adopted by so many of 
our self-educated men — I admit them to be men of great 
merit, so far as good intentions and persistent industry are in 
question — explains why so many of these men are men 
of hobbies, or " fads " as they are called in the slang of the 
day. A hobby or fad is some fragmentary view of the world 
set up for the central principle of all things. It has been 
stated that a man with a hobby does not see his favorite sub- 
ject in its just relations — does not comprehend its process of 
origination nor see how it implies the existence of other 
things. He does not understand the interdependence of all 
things. In contrast to him stands the old-time graduate of 
college, before the admission requirements had been raised. 
He received the first part of higher education, the culture 
side of it, as he does now. It gave him his view of the world. 
It is true that the family and the Church give to the child his 
view of the world, but they omit the logical connections. 
The child does not think out the results nor see their grounds; 
nor does he apply that view^ of the world as a measuring rod 
to the branches of knowledge. 

Let me conclude this address by a summary of the views 
presented. In the college the pupil has the thought of his 
civilization presented to him as a practical guiding principle. 



1898] TJic 2isc of higher education 159 

He meets it in every recitation room and in the general con- 
duct of the institution. He finds himself in association with 
a large number of students all occupied upon this work of 
learning the regulative principles not only of human conduct 
but also of the world of knowledge. 

The lawyer, after working years and years over his cases, 
comes by and by to have what is called a " legal mind," so 
that he sees at a glance, almost as by intuition, w^hat the law 
wdll be in a new case. So, in the four years of college under- 
graduate life, the student gets an insight which enables him to 
decide immediately a phase of the problem of life. He forms 
a habit of mind which inquires constantly of each thing and 
event: How does this look in the light of the whole of human 
learning? What is the '' good form " which the consensus 
of the scholars of the world has fixed for this? He learns at 
once to suspect what are called '' isms " and universal pana- 
ceas as one-sided statements. The wisdom of the race begins 
to form a conscious element of his life. 

While the first part of higher education gives this general 
insight into what is good form in view of the unity of human 
learning, the second part — that which teaches methods of 
original investigation — should be made accessible to all stu- 
dents of colleges and universities. For this purpose endow- 
ments are needed, first in the forms of fellowships which will 
enable the student to live comfortably while he is preparing 
himself for his doctor's degree. A second kind of endow- 
ment may promote research and take the form of prizes for 
special investigations. 

The laboratories and seminaries of this post-graduate 
course may and do take up the practical problems of the life 
of the people. These are capable of immense benefit in soci- 
ology and politics, to say nothing of the industries of the peo- 
ple, rural and urban. The entire civil service of the United 
States should find employment for experts armed with 
methods of original investigation and with the readiness and 
daring to undertake the solution of problems which ofifer 
themselves perpetually in our civil life. The town council, 
the board of public w^orks, the various directive powers which 



i6o Educational Review [September 

manage the affairs of the State and municipahty are in con- 
stant need of Hght, and the student of the post-graduate de- 
partment of the university is the person needed to furnish by 
his special studies the aggregate result of the experience of 
the world in answering these practical and theoretical wants. 
In a country studying ever new political questions and ques- 
tions in sociology, the student who obtains his Doctor's de- 
gree from the post-graduate couri^ can apply his knowledge, 
and apply it rationally, without losing his self-possession. 

Since 1880. when our census showed a population of more 
than fifty millions, we have ascended above the horizon of the 
great nations of Europe. 

Henceforth we have a new problem, namely to adjust our- 
selves to the European unity of civilization. It is absurd to 
suppose that the problems of diplomacy which wall arise in 
our relations to the states of the Old World can be solved by 
minds untrained in the university. For it is higher educa- 
tion which takes the student back to historic sources and de- 
scends from national beginnings, tracing the stream of events 
to the various points at which modern nations have arrested 
their development. Successful diplomacy is not possible 
without thorough knowledge of national aspirations and 
their historic genesis. 

It is almost equally important that our home problems, 
social and political, shall be studied by our university special- 
ists. Perpetual readjustment is before us. There is the new 
aristocracy of wealth struggling against the aristocracy of 
birth. To both is opposed the aristocracy of culture, the only 
one that is permanent. All may come into the aristocracy of 
culture, but it requires supreme endeavor on the part of the 
individuals. 

With the great inventions of the age we find ourselves 
all living on a border land. We are brought into contact 
with alien nationalities and alien forms of civilization. We 
are forever placed in antagonism with some environment, 
material or spiritual, and our endeavor must perforce be to 
effect a reconciliation — to unite the conflicting ideas in a 
deeper one that conserves what is good in each. There is 



I898J 



The use of higher ed?icatio)i 



161 



no other recourse — we must look to higher education to fur- 
nish the formula for the solution of the problems of our 
national life. 

We accordingly rejoice in the fact of the increasing popu- 
larity of the university in both of its functions — that of cul- 
ture and that of specialization. 

William T. Harris 



Bureau of Education, 

Washington, 



D. C. 



Appendix I — Number of college 
students to each 1,000,000 persons in 
the United States (excluding profes- 
sional and technical students, but in- 
cluding post-graduate students). 



1872 

1873 
1874 

1875 
1876 
1877 
1878 

1879 

18S0 

1881 

1882-83 

1883-84 

1884-85 

1885-86 

1886-87 

1887-88 

i888-8g 

i88g-90 

i8go-gi 

i8gi-g2 

i8g2-g3 

1893-94 
i8g4-g5 
1895-96 
i8g6-g7 



590 

740 

760 

740 

720 

710 

790 

780 

780 

760 

740 

750 

760 

700 

710 

710 

750 

880 

930 

1020 

1080 

1140 

1190 

1220 

1210 



Appendix II — The following table 
shows the number of post-graduate stu- 
dents in the universities and colleges 
of the United States each year for 
twenty-five years 
in Appendix II). 
1871-72 
1872-73 
1873-74 
1874-75 
1875-76 



1876-77 
1S77-7S 
i87S--g 
i87g-£o 
1SS0-81 
1S82-S3 
1S83-S4 
1SS4-85 
1885-86 
1S86-87 
1887-SS 
i88S-8g 
i88g-go 
iSgo-gi 
1S91-92 
iSg2-g3 
1893-94 
1S94-95 
1895-96 
1896-97 



389 
414 

465 
411 
460 
522 
778 
869 
935 
1237 
1290 

1343 
1717 

2131 
2499 

2851 

3493 
3999 
4363 
4919 



Appendix III — Number of profes- 
sional students to each 1, coo, 000 per- 
sons in the United States. 
1S72 2S0 



1876 

18S1 

1885-S6 

1890-gi 

1895-96 



380 
440 
450 
570 
740 



Appendix IV — Students in scien- 
tific and technical courses in the United 

States. 



lese are included 
. 198 


i88g-go 
i8go-gi 
i8gi-g2 






14,869 
15,586 
17,012 


. 2ig 
. 283 
. 369 
• 399 


i8g2-g3 
1893-94 
1894-95 
1895-96 






20,32g 
23,254 
24-055 
23.598 



204 Educational Review [September 



From Editorial by Dr. N. M. Butler in Educational Review 

Dr. Harris'on the It is important that teachers and citizens 
Nation's^ Duty generally should ponder some of the con- 
and,-Opportunity siderations that the war with Spain and its 
results force upon us. We therefore take pleasure in repro- 
ducing, in full, the important contribution to this subject 
made by Dr. Harris in his address given at the opening ses- 
sion of the National Educational Association at Washington : 

It is^fitting that you hold this annual session at the Capital of the Nation. 
You meet here at an important epoch in the history of our country. The 
annual census of the United States in 1880 showed for the first time an 
aggregate of over fifty millions of inhabitants. It was a true remark then 
made by one of us, in a session of the Department of Superintendence, that 
America had now for the first time ascended above the horizon of Europe. 
We had become visible to Great Britain and its peers on the Continent as 
a nation of equal rank, and to be taken account of in future adjustments of 
the powers of the world. In that year we had reached the full stature of 
national manhood, and were as strong as the strongest nations of Europe 
in numbers and wealth-producing power. After another ten years, in 1890, 
we found that in effective size and strength we surpassed, in wealth-produc- 
ing power and in numbers, the most powerful of them. 

It has been only a question of time when we should take our place 
among the nations and have our share in the management of the affairs of 
the world ; when we should be counted with the great powers of Europe in 
the government of Asia, Africa, and the isles of the sea. It was a moment 
to be postponed rather than hastened by the patriotic citizen. When our 
power of producing wealth is increasing out of proportion with the rest of 
the world, and when our population is swelled by waves of migration from 
Europe, why should we be in feverish haste to precipitate the new era of 
close relationship with the states of Europe ? for that lies beyond the parting 
of the ways and the beginning of an essentially new career. Most of what 
is old and familiar to us must change and give place to new interests. 
Once the United States enters upon this career, all its power and resources 
must be devoted to adapting it to the new situation and defending its line 
of advance. For it cannot move back without national humiliation. 

And it is this very summer that the hand on the dial of our history has 
pointed at twelve, and for better or worse we have entered upon our new 
epoch as an active agent in the collected whole of great powers that deter- 
mine and fix the destiny of the peoples on the planet. This new era is one 
of great portent to the statesmen of America. All legislation hereafter must 
be scrutinized in view of its influence upon our international relations. We 
cannot any longer have that smug sense of security and isolation which has 
permitted us to legislate without considering the effect of our action on 
foreign nations. Hereafter our chief national interest must be the foreign 
one, and consequently our highest studies must be made on the characters, 



J 



1898] Editorial 205 

inclinations, and interests of foreign powers. It is obvious tliat this study 
requires,^ greater breadtli of education, more careful studies in history and 
in thy^Tianners and customs of European nations ; their methods of organ- 
izioig industries as well as their methods of organizing armies and navies, 
^e must even master foreign literatures, and see what are the fundamental 
aspirations of the people who read them. All this study concerns the 
system of education in this country. It indicates the function of the school- 
master in the coming time. 

The new burden of preparing our united people for the responsibilities of 
a closer union with Europe and for a share in the dominion over the islands 
and continents of the Orient — this new burden will fall on the school systems 
in the several States, and more particularly on the colleges and universities 
that furnish the higher education. For it is higher education that must 
direct the studies in history and in the psychology of peoples which will 
provide our ministers and ambassadors abroad their numerous retinues of 
experts and specialists thoroughly versed in the habits and traditions of^.the 
several nations. The knowledge required by our members of Congrp«s and 
our executive departments will make a demand upon higher edurffation for 
post-graduate students who have concentrated their investigmions upon 

(points in international law and the philosophy of history, .diplomacy will 
become a great branch of learning for us. 

This has been felt for some time.'although it has not been consciously 
realized. In the past twenty-five years the enrollment in higher education, 
in college work alone, has increased from 590 to 12 10 in the million ; it has 
more than doubled in each million of people. The post-graduate work of 
training experts or specialists has been multiplied by 25 ; for it has increased 
from a total of 200 to a total of'5000 in the nation. 

The education of the elementary school fits the citizen for most of his 
routine work in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and mining. But the 
deeper problems of uniting our nation with the other great nations, and 
harmonizing our unit of force with that greater unit, must be solved by 
higher education, for it alone can make the wide combinations that are 
necessary. Shallow elementary studies give us the explanation of that 
which lies near us. They help us to recognize our immediate environment, 
but for the understanding of deep national differences and for the manage- 
ment of all that is alien to our part of the world, deeper studies are required. 
The student must penetrate the underlying fundamental principles of the 
world history in order to see how such different fruits have grown on the 
same tree of humanity. We must look to our universities and colleges for 
the people who have learned to understand the fashions and daily customs 
of a foreign people, and who have learned to connect the surface of their 
everyday life with the deep national principles and aspirations which mold 
and govern their individual and social action. Hence the significance of 
this epoch in which we are assembled to discuss the principles of education 
and its methods of practice. There have been great emergencies, and great 
careers have opened to American teachers, in our former history; but we 
stand to-day on the vestibule of a still more important time-period : it is the 
era of the union of the New World with the Old World. 



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